OUTDOORS

OUTDOORS; Nature Is Surely Nice, but at Times You Have to Have a Fish

By Nelson Bryant

Published: November 3, 1991

Anglers will tell you that a fishless day is not a disappointment, that tarrying on lake or stream or beside the sounding surf is sufficient reward.

A string of such days is a different matter, however, and there comes a time when glorious sunsets, misty dawns, grouse bursting from trailside thickets or a loon's call are not enough -- when, above all else, the angler desperately needs to catch something.

In September, I spent more than a week in a vain effort to capture an Atlantic salmon in Nova Scotia. I saw salmon every day and on most of those days, I persuaded one or two of them to make a pass at my fly. When pursuing Atlantic salmon, one gets used to this sort of thing, but while driving back home to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., I resolved to take my fly rod to the beach and pull in bluefish until my wrist ached.

The location I had in mind was the Tisbury Great Pond opening, a cut through the barrier beach to the ocean that had been made unusually wide and deep by Hurricane Bob.

Throughout the summer, I had caught bluefish and striped bass there -- almost always at the end of the outgoing tide --, reaching that spot via an outboard-driven canoe which I keep at Town Cove on the pond's upper end.

More than two weeks passed after my return from Canada before I found time to visit the opening. I chose a day when the tide would begin falling at about 7 in the morning. On my way down to the pond in my canoe at 8 A.M., I could see four human forms on the beach and I was distressed. I do not enjoy fishing in crowds. My distress abated when I got close enough to see that two of the four were strollers.

The other two were Vermonters, spending a few days on the island, which is famous for its fall angling for blues and stripers. Bob Iwaskiewicz of East Fairfield and Andy Lambert of Cambridge, Vt., had been on the beach since dawn, and had caught nothing. They had reached the opening the hard way, backpacking in from the west with their fishing gear.

Although they had taken no fish thus far that morning at the opening, they had, they told me, landed some nice stripers there in previous days.

Although I wanted to catch blues on my fly rod, I had also brought along two surf rods, just in case the fish remained well offshore. I am not a fly-fishing purist. Food gathering is important to me and I am very fond of bluefish if they are consumed within 48 hours of capture.

The Vermonters and I worked away at the opening's west side for two hours without a hit.

"Never fear," I told them, "the bluefish will show at the end of the tide."

Sometime around 10:30, Lambert hooked a bluefish on a Kastmaster jig only to lose it at his feet. We encountered no more fish and at noon my new-found friends called it quits. I told them that they should hang around until the water stopped running out of the pond, but they had promises to keep. I remained another two hours and did nothing to fulfill my craving for action.

Later that day, I received a call from Kib Bramhall, one of Martha's Vineyard's most accomplished anglers, who wanted to know if I wished to join him and a friend for some surf fishing that evening. I explained that I had other commitments. I then told him of my morning at the opening and of my desire to end my string of fishless days.

Kib called back the next morning to say that he had just learned that bluefish had blitzed the shore all the previous day at Lobsterville Beach in Gay Head.

I was profuse in my thanks for the tip.

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "It may have been a one-shot affair."

I assembled my fly rod and spent a little more time attaching some short, wire leaders to an assortment of flies and popping bugs. I usually don't bother with wire leaders for blues -- being too lazy to fashion them -- but I had just received a batch of the leaders from John McBride's Blackledge River Company of East Lyme, Conn.

McBride, a factory representative for manufacturers of fishing gear, has his leaders assembled with a small double loop at one end. All one has to do is fasten one's fly to the other end with a haywire twist. Called Elite single-strand-wire shock tippets, they are available at many tackle shops.

I wanted to go to Lobsterville in mid-afternoon, but some carpentry tasks intervened and I didn't get there until 5.

Two men were on the beach when I arrived, both casting with no results, but a half mile eastward along the shore, there was a great knot of herring gulls over the water. I walked in that direction but before I got abreast of the birds a school of bluefish raced to within 10 feet of shore at my feet driving a shower of terrified silverside minnows before them. There were hundreds of blues, so many that the sound of their feeding was a muted roar. My first cast resulted in a six-pounder, and from then until after sunset, the only time I wasn't fast to a fish was when they momentarily dispersed or moved down the beach.

I was still casting when the full moon rose above the Menemsha hills and, with seven fish on the beach and an equal number of them released, my wrist ached and I was sated.